I want to try 12.04.1 LTS on my Dell Inspiron 15R laptop. I want to know whether the hardware of the laptop is compatible with Ubuntu and they'll just work with Ubuntu as fine as they work with Windows 7.

Following are my hardware specs as I found. Can anyone tell me, will they work fine and the machine will run smoothly?

1 Answer
1

Same model I have (except I have an i5). Every thing works out of the box except the three buttons at the top of the keyboard. I have yet to figure out what they're for anyways LOL. Also, the Widi doesn't work as support for it in Linux hasn't happened yet. The bluetooth and wifi are fine. I'm using all 4 cores. The first day I bought it, it took 1.5 hours for the fan to start running. If you're looking for a linux distro with a laptop, I would say this is a perfect fit.

Thank you very much for your quick and clear answer! If something goes wrong with the installation can I revert back to windows 7 easily? I have heard that the hard drive should be formatted in a manner that it can receive Windows again. Thanks again.
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MaheshSep 8 '12 at 19:59

I would suggest making a backup disc (if the machine offers it, I installed Ubuntu directly and didn't worry about that.) Afterwards, install Ubuntu, if you don't like it, use the backup discs to restore windows 7, or you could dualboot it so you would choose each time the computer started up if you wanted to use Ubuntu or Windows. You have a 1TB hard drive so unless you just download your heart out you should have plenty of room for both of them. Just when you install Ubuntu, tell it to install alongside windows.
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KI4JGTSep 8 '12 at 20:46